Thursday - August 19, 2010

Healthcare ‘monovision’ cr@p

It’s that time of year again; time to scramble and get all those little annoying health items attended to, paid for, and file the refund claims on your healthcare flexible spending account.

That’s the bad thing about FSA’s: You guess what your out-of-pocket medical expenses will be for the next year––that much is withheld from your paycheck––if you don’t use it, you lose it. The government just keeps your money. I wish I qualified for a plain medical savings account. Then what I don’t use just rolls over.

I’ve had an healthcare FSA for the last six years. I/we have used it all every year.

But this year I’m worried: I increased my ‘guess’ at our out-of-pocket health expenses this year. My goal was to goad my wife into getting a full physical, with the attendant co-pays and deductibles. My mistake...I know how she feels about doctors...she’s never had a full physical in our 20+ years of marriage. It’s not for lack of my encouragement either: whenever I suggest a physical it starts a figh...er...an argument. So, I still have a full FSA to spend…

Today I decided to take care of one of the little items I’ve neglected: new glasses/contacts.

I was shocked! The expense...was...far cheaper than I’d expected. So today I got an exam for both glasses and contacts. I ordered two pairs of bifocals, and walked out with a test set of contact.

That’s right. Contact. Only one. In my __ eye.

( __ eye = ‘dominant eye’. In the interest of identity protection, you do not need to know which of my three eyes is ‘dominant’. )

I’d never heard of this before. It’s called ‘monovision’. The doctor knew which of my eyes was ‘dominant’. I never knew eyes were ‘dominant’ or ‘submissive’. When I questioned him about how he knew which eye was dominant, he handed me a small box, told me to hold it like a camera. ‘Now, put it to your eye like you’re looking through the viewer’. Guess what? I do use my __ eye for that. I started remembering...it is indeed my __ eye I use when star-gazing through my telescope. Who knew?

(The Doctor Knows...mwhahahahaha!)

With the ‘monovision’ option, he’s just putting one contact in to correct my dominant eye to see far away (I’m near-sighted). The other eye is still free for reading and other close work. My other option was bifocal contacts, which are more expensive. The downside is (and this I got off a Wikipedia article when I got home) some disorientation due to loss of depth perception (particularly in the uncorrected eye).

BTW, this is all out of my own pocket. No health insurance coverage for this. (maybe the insurance would cover some small part of the eye exam itself, but it’s so small as to not be worth the time to file, or even the envelope and postage stamp.)

ObamaCare went entirely the wrong way.

Ideally, I’d have a medical savings account that I fund with my own money. This would be for out-of-pocket expenses. What I don’t spend this year would roll over. I’d also shop around for medical insurance to cover me/wife/us for something catastrophic. These would get the same tax-breaks that employers get for providing health insurance. This would mean freedom. This means I can shop around for the best and/or cheapest medical service. And…

!

It would save the government money by removing healthcare from the Federal budget. Period!

Posted by Christopher     on 08/19/2010 at 04:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Editorials • Health-Medicine • Personal •  
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